Canadian-born rapper Drake released his viral music video for his song “Hotline Bling” last month, with parodies as big as Saturday Night Live or as basic as a Halloween costume. The students of University of British Columbia are using this trend in hopes of getting the rapper to perform on campus.
Harris Wong, a second-year psychology student, helped from beginning to end with this project, from filming, to media, to spreading the word. The project was launched by three on-campus groups — the Alma Mater Society, Dive Into UBC, and the Calendar — with an idea to get theGrammy-award-winning rapper’s attention.
“Basically our campaign consisted of constructing a lightbox similar to the one Drake had in his hotline bling video, filming 10-second videos involving UBC students, and tweeting said videos to Drake via Twitter every minute from 9 a.m.-9 p.m. on one day,” Wong said.
Filming took place on campus on Nov. 1o and 11, with an outstanding turnout.
“In total, we had around 350 10-second videos, starring the students of UBC. Videos ranged from having one person involved to around 15 people involved. So in total, there must have been upwards of 700-1,000.”
However, the next part of the plan, to tweet the star, was halted by a global tragedy.
“Unfortunately, the day we were tweeting all of the videos was the same day as the attacks in Paris. Therefore, we stopped the chain of tweets to respect the events that took place,” Wong said. “However, we did end up tweeting a substantial amount of videos to Drake’s account that morning.”
Wong feels that it has been a great way to showcase the university’s student life as well as increase school spirit.
Even if Drake has yet to see the mountain of tweets, everyone else seems to be paying attention, with a heavy attraction given to the event by multiple news outlets.
“I think it is really cool how much attention this project has gotten — Buzzfeed, CBC, Huffington Post and many more have talked about us,” Wong said. “We were all really flattered with the attention and were super proud that the hard work we all put in was recognized. It was also a great opportunity to showcase UBC as a student campus and show how everyone was involved.”
All photos provided by source.
